Schools Fantasy League

classroom use

Context

Pupils were given the opportunity to take part in and sign up to the Schools Fantasy League website. Those interested took home a manager pack, filled it in and then entered their teams online during lunchtimes with teacher (Chairman) support! Children from Y3 to Y6 entered. Some pupils found it more difficult to enter their information, this was mainly due to the small size of the form and the 'cost' of the players which was given in decimals of millions and therefore beyond the mathematical capabilities of some of the pupils. Luckily support was able to be provided by Y6 and chairman!

Schools Fantasy League activities were carried out in the children's own time, i.e. lunchtimes and after school. However the students were keen to ask members of staff if the site could be accessed whenever the internet was used in class!

Labour saving aspects

There was no additional labour for teaching staff, only the chairman! I found that the paper and web forms took a long time to fill out correctly, and so this took up a lot of the chairman's and pupils' time, out of school hours and lunchtimes.

The website is easily accessed and resources quickly downloadable.

Learning outcomes

There is the option to change players (a transfer window) during the season and so pupils' research skills can be put to use to research the 'best' players. It puts staff and pupils on an even footing and so helps build up good relationships between them.

Student Response

There was a good response to SFL in each year group. About 40% of pupils in years 3 to 6 were involved. Children have remained interested in the position of their team and others, particularly those of members of staff!

Unfortunately not everyone signed up therefore not all were interested and may not motivate all if used as a teaching resource.

Special Needs

The website is easily accessed and there is no need for children to save information or update it themselves as this is done by SFL weekly. Although there is no specific differentiation provided by the website, children are able to access many areas of the curriculum through the website quickly and easily. It provides motivation and ownership of a child's learning. Positive feedback is provided through team success as teams constantly move up and down the league table.

IWB Suitability

Not applicable. Only to display results, users work independently but manager could display screen to talk about with pupils.However, The pict itself can be displayed on an IWB and tactics discussed as part of a wet games lesson. In our school, we have close links in any case with a local professional football club, and we used the IWB in a school linked football club competition, to look at web sites of clubs used for players and their foootball kit to enable pupils to design new ones. Other schools could use the Fantasy league as a stimulus to do the same. I actually used combinations of different tops, socks and shorts in a mtahs lesson to allow pupils to problem solve as a whole class activity.

The Educational Resources sheets themselves are for teacher use only and would not be a suitable resource for the IWB.

Assessment and pupil tracking opportunities

There are not really any assessment opportunities although it was interesting to see who could/could not add up to �60 million. Because of time limiting factors, individual teachers did not fill in these forms with their classes and therefore did not see this!

This was only applicable in so far as each pupil tracked their own team and as a school we could track the leading team of both pupils and staff.